Maximizing cross-functional new product teams' innovativeness and constraint adherence: A conflict communications perspective

Increasing competition resulting from the global and technological nature of markets has heightened the need for businesses to rely on cross-functional new product teams to produce innovations in a timely manner; yet functionally diverse teams' inevitable disagreements often appear to prevent this. In a study of 43 such teams, we found that the effect of task disagreement on team outcomes depended on how free members felt to express task-related doubts and how collaboratively or contentiously these doubts were expressed. Implications for managing the journey from disagreement to agreement in cross-functional new product teams are discussed.